Safe To Shore
by FeathersMcStrange
Summary: Stubborn people sometimes have difficulties saying what they need to say. Sometimes it takes a push to start something on the road it needs to be on. Sometimes it's easy. Mostly it's not. And the Hotchner brothers are nothing if not stubborn. (prompt: Aaron and Sean Hotchner, "You're not useless." warnings for: implied canonical child abuse)


For my dearest darling Adrianna, I hope you enjoy this. And for Merry and Kai too, because I know Hotchner Brothers Feelings are right up your alley.

I am Literally Emotions. You can find me on tumblr at aroharveyspecter! Send me writing prompts. Bug me about updates. Cry about tv shows. :D

- Alexis

* * *

_Some days I can't even_

_Trust myself_

_It's killing me_

_To see you this way_

_Cause though the truth may vary_

_This ship will carry our bodies_

_Safe to shore_

_- 'Little Talks' Of Monsters And Men_

It is late in the dusk of a day that has lasted a decade. He stands beside a half open window, white button up hanging open. It flutters slightly in the chill February wind, but Aaron is lost to the world, living not in this moment but in a moment several hours earlier. The tight grouping of dark, ugly bruises are a time machine, yanking him back to gunfire and screaming and an addled mind that knew not where or when it was.

Aaron shivers and pulls the shirt closed. His fingers are clumsy and foreign to him, fumbling with the buttons. Gunshots stopped by vests do not cease to exist, he thinks, they merely make you slightly less dead. He stares into the mirror for a moment longer, taking in dark circled eyes, a tinge of red staining one corner of his mouth. He pulls his gun from its holster and puts it in the bedside drawer. Jack is not here right now, he is with Jessica on Aaron's request.

It's been that kind of a day.

Descending the stairs in a daze, Aaron thinks that he can still feel it, the last vestiges of the toxic cocktail of drugs coursing through his poisoned bloodstream. There isn't a thing he is sure of now, not after the events of the past few hours. A ghost gun still lays in his hand, the memory of cold steel making his fingers clench involuntarily.

The kitchen is cool and quiet, the lights off and the low hum of the fridge the only sound he can detect. Alcohol is probably a bad idea at the moment, thanks to the mixture of god-knows-what still lingering in his veins, so he stands at the sink and stares blankly, trying to remember what it is he came down here for.

He has whirled in a sharp, quick arc, the butcher knife raised high in his right hand before he even registers that he has heard a sound. When his head clears his fingers go lax, the knife clattering to the floor in a sudden, jarring burst of sound. In the doorway Sean stands, his palms raised and his eyes wide.

"_Damn it_," Aaron snaps, trembling hands running through his hair and swiping hard across his eyes. "_Damn it_, Sean."

"I was going to ask if you're alright, but I think I just got my answer." Sean's hands slowly drop to his sides, and he shoves them in his pockets, slouching against the doorway. Aaron blinks and – just for a reflection of a moment – Sean is sixteen years old. It takes his breath away.

Or maybe, on second thought, that was the cracked ribs. When Aaron glances down, his hands are still shaking.

"What are you doing here?" The question is tired, a tremor running through it.

"Can't a guy just drop in and visit his big brother?" asks Sean in a voice that probably tried for joking but lands twelve degrees south of strained. When Aaron doesn't answer, he sighs and walks closer, leaning back against the counter beside him. "Dave called me. He's worried about you. They all are. Said he would've come himself, but didn't think it was a good idea."

Aaron shakes his head, shooting a look towards the ceiling. God damn David Rossi, never could just leave it alone.

Being checked up on and fussed over is something Aaron still hasn't gotten used to. And now apparently Dave had gone and roped his brother into it as well.

As the silence stretches on like a thousand miles of empty highway before them, he registers that Sean is close enough that he can feel warmth on his left side.

"I tried to kill him today."

If Sean is surprised, he hides it well. "What happened?"

He doesn't share. Aaron Hotchner does not do _sharing_. He takes in the worries of others, bears their hurt on his shoulders, absorbs as much of their troubles as he can take and then some. He does not unload on others. He never has been that man, the kind that can accept the same help he offers, but for some reason he cannot pinpoint or perhaps does not want to, tonight it comes rushing out.

"I tried to shoot Dave today, Sean. The guy we were after, he got the drop on me, and he... injected me with something. I didn't know which way was up or what was real and what wasn't. I thought..." The knot in his throat holding his breath hostage is either ice or cannot tell which one.

Not for a single moment in either of their lives can Aaron remember being able to list 'patience' as a virtue attributable to Sean. Yet today he stands in silence, and Aaron cannot remember when he came to stand directly beside him, but there is a part of him that is desperately grateful for the silent shoulder brushing his.

"I thought he was dad."

The words taste like a confessional, heavy and leaden as they leave his mouth. He still is not entirely sure he believes them himself. Such a thing is too ludicrous to imagine, and yet the echo of the phrase 'get away from him' stains his lips, the shadow of a trigger pulling at his forefinger.

"You thought he was dad." Sean says it like he is waiting for a contradiction, a 'don't be ridiculous'. It does not come. His eyebrows raise a fraction and he swallows. He is struck with a gladness that he is beside Aaron and not across from him, because of all the moments in the world, if he were to meet his brother's eyes in this one...

He just can't.

"I don't know what that guy loaded me up with, but it messed with my head. I thought Dave was dad and I was standing there with the gun in my hand and I swear I was this close to pulling the trigger. If he had taken one more step, gotten one more inch closer to Morgan, who knows what I would ha-" The freezing heat has returned, cleaving the word in two, leaving the rest to tumble soundlessly from a stone tongue. Aaron had not meant to go that far. Hadn't wanted Sean to know that part. Well, truthfully he hadn't wanted Sean to know _any _of it, but apparently his mind had other ideas.

Sean still cannot look at him, but he asks all the same. He had made a promise to a worried, edgy voice on a tinny phone speaker, a vow to 'make sure he's alright'. He had sworn to Dave and to all of them that he would do what it took to ensure Aaron was okay.

Clearly this was not to be the case, but still he felt the obligation thick in his chest. The least he could do was provide an open ear to the whole story.

"Morgan."

"What?"

Aaron is jumpy. Nervous. If Sean had been able to force his gaze to meet his brother's, he would have seen the suffering Aaron held, the depth of what this incident had dredged to the surface. Old wounds still ached, Sean thought, and sometimes those on a person's soul can agonize even the strongest of us worse than any physical pain.

"You said something about Morgan. He was part of it?"

Aaron's response is inaudible. He clears his throat and tries again, but still the words will not come. On the third go of it, he finds his voice, and the divulgence of the last piece of the trauma that had shaken the strongest man Sean knew right to his core hung in the air, cloying in Sean's lungs like bands of iron stealing his breath away.

"I thought Dave was dad and I. I thought Morgan was you. I was going to shoot him to- to stop him from hurting you."

_Why_, Sean wants to say, _why did you have to bring this up? I wanted to forget, Aaron, there is nothing in the world I want more than to forget._

_ Are you okay?_

These are all questions he cannot ask, things he cannot bring into the world. Apology, blame, anger, worry... There is no room for it in a quiet, darkened kitchen that already is full to bursting with memories. Anything more and it may implode, taking both of them with it.

Even more than all of that, though, he wants to say that he is sorry. He wants to be five years old again, he wants to cling to his brother and cry, _I'm sorry Aaron, I'm so so sorry._

But all he can say is, "It's never going to go away, is it."

Aaron shakes his head slowly. "There's a lot that doesn't ever go away, Sean. I see it every day, and there are days when I think that no matter how hard I fight I am still going to end up standing in the middle of the sidewalk, pointing a gun at a ghost. There are days when I just feel _useless_."

"You're not useless."

The sentence leaves him quick, in one short burst. Sean had not meant to say it but life is a chess game and there are no take-backs. He sees the look Aaron gives him out of the corner of his eye and he flushes, scuffing the floor with the toe of his shoe.

"I mean... Well... I just..." This time he looks up, looks Aaron straight in the eye. "No. Yeah. Just what I said. You're not useless, Aaron. I can't think of anybody I know who can do what you do and still find it in themselves to get up in the morning, not to mention keep doing it. So just. Don't ever think that, okay?"

The expression on Aaron's exhausted face looks like a prayer.

Truly Sean cannot believe he just said that, but it has been said, and he made the right decision in saying it. He seems to do the right thing by accident more often than he does it on purpose, he thinks.

Their conversation turns from the leaden weight it started with to a lighter, more desirable selection of topics. Aaron asks him how he's doing since getting out – released early on good behavior miraculously enough – and they chat for an indeterminable amount of time.

It has been years since talking to Aaron was this easy.

Maybe it never has been.

When Sean leaves, it is dark outside, and Aaron turns the porch light on, standing in the doorway as he walks down the front steps. A few feet down the walkway, he turns around, looking up at the superhero that a part of him still wants to be when he grows up. The expression on Aaron's face is not one he is used to seeing on his world weary older brother. It kind of looks almost like peace.

"Thank you."

Aaron gives him a funny look, arms folded. "For what?"

He smiles, and just like before, he looks sixteen years old, like he still believes Aaron can move mountains.

"For everything."

As he watches Sean walk through the night down towards his car, it is Aaron's turn to smile. It's never going to go away. He knows this. He has made his peace with it. But it is going to get easier to carry. The road he stands on now, his brother beside him, is one that has no end. And he can live with that, he realizes, because nobody shouted tonight. He said things tonight he thought he could never live with, and Sean listened to something Aaron thought he could never bear to see him hear.

Nobody yelled. Nobody left the room, anger and hurt welling inside their chest.

_I love you too_, he thinks as he closes the door, watching headlights vanish down the road. Maybe one day he can say it aloud.

One day soon, perhaps.

Yeah.

It's going to get easier.


End file.
